A sense of urgency could be discerned as Glebe’s unashamedly partisan
supporters streamed down to Wentworth Park on 13 May 1911. They did not need to
hurry but there was excitement in the air. Chris McKivat and the Burge
brothers, Albert, Frank and Peter, carrying the hopes of the Reds on their
shoulders, were matched against the men from Eastern Suburbs that included two
great players, Dally Messenger and Sandy Pearce. The Bulletin reported Easts ‘received an ‘unholy doing’ from the
men of Glebe who wear red, and live near the abattoirs…..Messenger did
not’fizz’…with Peter Burge grassing him every few minutes...and the Glebe men
continued the butchery tactics’.[i]
The ‘game was fast and furious at times’, according to another football
correspondent, ‘Two men were carried off injured. Two more were ordered off.
Now and then the spectators worked to a pitch of excitement started melees of
their own. The game itself was a triumph for the local forwards who ran over
their opponents. Wentworth Park crowds are always demonstrative. They never
hesitate to show on which side of the fence their sympathies lie. So when the
play was at its fiercest on Saturday the crowd yelled ‘Red, red, red’ to encourage
the local champions. Eastern Suburbs had a good following but it was on Glebe’s
native heath and it was Glebe’s day out’.[ii]

Wentworth Park on a Saturday afternoon, only a stone’s throw from small
workers cottages wedged in between warehouses and factories, was an important
part of group life, a hallowed place where Glebe denizens gathered to watch
their boys perform ritual slaughter on the visiting team. Rugby League in Glebe
by 1911 was a staple part of local culture, and the passion partisans
stridently demonstrated from the terraces for twenty two seasons had not abated
in 1929 when their beloved club was unceremoniously dumped from the
competition.

A powerful emotional attachment to their club came to the fore in
November 1929. Thousands of locals signed a petition to the NSWRFL not to expel
their club and filled Glebe Town Hall to vent their anger. But the people
behind engineering the demise of the Glebe club carefully closed off all
avenues of escape. The manner of Glebe’s elimination, in the best traditions of
Tammany Hall, was something Glebe residents would neither forget nor forgive.

Football had a very strong tradition in Glebe. They were the team to beat
when the Sydney District rugby competition began in 1900. Glebe District Rugby
Union Club established a formidable reputation in the first year of that
competition, losing only two of their forty one matches in all grades and
emerging as premiers in first, second and third grades.[iii]
Glebe emerged as the dominant rugby club in the Sydney competition to 1914,
winning the first grade premiership on seven occasions (1900, 1901, 1906, 1907,
1909, 1912, and 1914). Thirty two members of the club won state caps, and 12
played for Australia against visiting international rugby teams.[iv]

Despite the success of the Glebe
rugby club, there was an underlying discontent among playersabout the way rugby union wasadministered, and during 1907 a number of
Glebe rugby players were at the forefront of formation of a breakaway movement,
the New South Rugby Football League (NSWRFL).[v]

Lewis Abrams, former Glebe rugby union
secretary, small in stature but a larger than life personality, understood
injury on the football field could be crippling to an ordinary working man
dependent on wages to pay the rent and support a family. He became the ‘bete
noire’ of the Metropolitan Rugby Union as he unsuccessfully sought compensation
for injured players, seeking to avert an impending schism in the game.[vi]

Abrams’ involvement with rugby and cricket clubs from the Glebe district
dated back to 1883, and he was a prominent figure in the NSW Cricket
Association in the reorganisation of cricket along district or electorate lines
from the 1893/94 season facilitating expansion of cricket to ovals at Wentworth
Park, Parramatta, Redfern, University, the Domain and Association Ground (SCG)
where seven district clubs East Sydney, Redfern, Paddington, Canterbury,
Central Cumberland,Manlyand Glebe, and University played.[vii]

The value of linking a sporting club
with a particular district, not introduced in Sydney until 1893, was justified
by rising attendance figures. A growing sense of identification with place
ensured that any club by taking the name of the town or suburb received strong
support, and cricket officials were the first to recognise the phenomenon.
‘Wentworth Park has been the venue for some very large congregations’, JC Davis
reported in 1896, that ‘10,000 being reached on several occasions’.[viii]
The standard of the cricket competition was also improved by the continued
participation of a number of internationals long after the end of their
first-class careers helping to enhance the popularity of the competition. By
1897 district-based cricket had spread inter-state to Brisbane and Adelaide.[ix]

Success of the reorganised Sydney
cricket competition, based on residential eligibility to play within a
particular district, convinced Abrams a comparable rugby competition would be
equally successful. At Glebe Town Hall in March 1894 Abrams told a meeting that
‘good football teams representing suburban districts would attract crowds
between 15,000 and 20,000 people’.[x] The
existing Sydney senior rugby competition was a mixture of old established clubs
such as Wallaroo and Pirates competed with several district-based clubs. After
considerable debate the rugby fraternity accepted appearance of local players
on their own grounds would generate spectator interest and on 24 May 1900 the
Sydney rugby district-based competition began with seven district clubs
participating, Glebe, Western Suburbs, Eastern Suburbs, Newtown, North Sydney,
South Sydney and Balmain, and University.[xi]

Sporting traditions in Glebe were deeply rooted in its popular culture.
Blood from sheep and cattle, slaughtered at Glebe Island Abattoirs, found their
way into the waters of Blackwattle Bay which, at times, were described as
‘blood red’.[xii] Glebe
Rowing Club discarded its red, white and blue colours in 1888 for a maroon
jersey and cap but in 1893 the local rugby club still played in black, blue and
gold jerseys.[xiii] By
1900 they had adopted the maroon jersey and were proudly proclaimed ‘the Dirty
Reds’. The making of sporting traditions in Glebe began in the final quarter of
the nineteenth century with its rowing club, and especially the district
cricket club, winning two premierships in the 1890’s, and fielding ateam with international players. Competition
in Sydney Tennis was organised on a district basis by the NSW Lawn Tennis
Association from September 1907, and the following year the NSW Rugby Football
League organised a competition with eight newly formed district clubs and
Newcastle to begin in late April 1908.[xiv]

Opportunities for leisure, and for
those bent on self-improvement, increased when a suburb reached sufficient size
to attract enough participants to form and fund a club. But women were largely
excluded from the new world of sport. Eleven different sporting clubs took the
name ofGlebe, rowing (1879), rugby
(1880), lawn bowls (1883), bicycle (1888,1899), baseball (1891), cricket
(1892), athletics (1892), lacrosse (1894), soccer (1903), pigeon racing (1908)
and swimming (1910). Two new distinctly working class institutions joined the
workingmen’s institute in 1905. The Glebe Pastime Club conducted in a local
hall with the main feature, a twenty round boxing bout, a military band, sing
and skipping. Its rival, Glebe Athletic Hall featured tin whistle playing,
singing and dancing, and ‘new moving pictures’.[xv]

In the decade after 1890 Australia
was transformed from a rural to a predominantly urban-industrialised nation,
with two thirds of the population living in cities. Henry Lawson came to Sydney
in 1883, working as a Sydney coach builder and recorded a grim picture of a
boarding house existence. He identified the working class, concentrated in
inner suburban Sydney, as the traditional peasantry with their own manners,
morals, customs and rituals, and developing a culture of their own,
recognisable by a style of life and leisure, by a certain class consciousness
expressed in a tendency to join unions, and to identify with a class party of
Labor.

The earliest suburbs of Sydney
began as semi-rural retreats of the well-to-do but towards the end of the
nineteenth century their sylvan fields were rapidly being filled with new
people, new houses and industry. The flight of the better off from the inner
city to suburbs on the outer limits of development gathered momentum from the
1890s and took place like a series of rings on the townscape, accompanied by a
gradual but perceptible change of class. Taking their places in a zone
embracing the municipalities of Alexandria, Balmain, Darlington, Glebe,
Marrickville, Newtown, Paddington, Redfern, St Peters and Waterloo were transients,
the boarding and lodging house population. The aggregate population of these
municipalities which climbed from 136,172 in 1891 to 192,297 in 1911 as they
became increasingly industrialised, predominantly tenanted and more working
class in identity and public life.[xvi]

Glebe Point remained ‘a favourite
place of residence for businessmen’ in 1895 according to an assessment in a
handbook of metropolitan Sydney which attempted a kind of social ranking of
suburbs, leaning towards respectable and generally accepted information. More
than two decades later the perception of Glebe’s stature by a similar type of
publication had altered; Glebe was now described as ‘mostly a large industrial
and manufacturing centre’.[xvii]

The findings of the Royal Commission for the Improvement of the City of
Sydney and its suburbs in 1909 was a blanket condemnation of the pattern of
life in inner Sydney, reinforcing the belief that its social and physical
fabric was doomed to decay.[xviii]
Residents unable to abandon these places lived with the slum stigma.

Increased leisure hours, an extension of tram tracks linking the city to
the suburbs, and the sheer growth of Sydney facilitated the development of an
urban popular culture and made mass spectator sport possible and which soon
became a feature of modern industrialised urban society. In the early years of
a new nation the working class began to assert themselves in industrial society
at large, and adopted sports distinctly working-class in character. Along with
the pub, workingmen’s institute and picture show, Saturday afternoon rugby
league made possible a new sense of belonging.

After formation of the New South Wales Rugby League, James Giltinan moved
about Sydney’s inner suburbs taking the gospel of rugby league with him,
promoting ideas of solidarity, collectivism and ‘a fair go’, recognising the
needs of working men injured playing the game.[xix]
The masculine orientation towards work and leisure were part of rugby league’s
appeal to Sydney’s working class communities, segregated in its inner
industrial suburbs and within the Glebe club the predominant occupational group
was manual workers. The game was ideally suited to fit in with the timetable of
labouring life and also served as an escape from the drab reality and
exploitation of working class life; the long grinding hours at factory benches,
or the hard, unremitting physical toil of pick and shovel.

As more took up the new game, Rugby League consolidated its identity
through political and religious connections. The vast majority of Glebe players
voted Labor, though paid up branch members were less numerous as were active
unionists. And adjoining Wentworth Park, St Ita’s Catholic school, provided a
steady stream of recruits, reinforcing another of rugby league’s connections
with the working class, its Catholicism through its separate school system.[xx]
The proportion of Catholics in Glebe was above the state-wide average in 1901
and George Parsons also found that in its formative years St George Rugby
League Club had a strong sub-cultural rump, Irish Catholics, mostly poor and
largely isolated from middle-class society.[xxi]

What can we say about the social background and life of a place that
spawned a pioneer rugby league club? Glebe had always been a well defined
social mosaic of middle class, lower middle-class and working-class
neighbourhoods, a highly stratified and unequal society, sharply divided along
class lines. People lived in the same suburb but inhabited different worlds.
Glebe’s population increased from 19220 (1901) to 22754 at the 1921 census with
4337 houses.

A mix of main street retailers, living behind or above the shop,
stretched along the eastern side of Glebe Point Road from Broadway to Bridge
Road and beyond. Vendors selling food, grocers, butchers, bakers and fruiterers
were most numerous, together with a group selling clothing and household goods,
boot-makers, dressmakers, tailors and milliners. The corner store, heavily
concentrated towards the southern end of Glebe, open till late at night and
extending credit to regular customers, offered a lifeline to poor families open
late and extending credit to regular customers, and the cluster of pubs in this
locality also played a strategic role in the organization of working class
culture. On Saturday evening Glebe Point Road was a crowded place, the best
trading time of the week when many working people came out to shop.[xxii]

The
local government franchiseensured Glebe
Council was composed of self-employed local businessmen in 1909, three real
estate agents, two carriers, two grocers, a chemist, contractor, hide merchant,
fruiterer and a wine and spirits merchant, all fiercely opposed to extension of
the adult franchise.[xxiii]
In occupation and status the councillors were not representative of the suburb
in which they held office, regarded by working people as creatures of employers
and property interests. The Labor Party, after the war became firmly entrenched
in working class communities and would wrest control of Glebe Council from
local businessmen in 1925.

Glebe Point was the most prestigious residential precinct, occupied by
the professional class, by people who owned and staffed their own businesses
together with a collection of less affluent self-employed people. Most of the
suburb’s social leaders lived here. Occupants of terraces and cottages in a
broad belt of land between Wigram Road and St Johns Road were drawn from an
array of occupational groups, clerical workers employed by private firms,
government school teachers, railway and post office officials, together with skilled
workmen and shop assistants who formed a lower adjunct of the middle class,
firmly attached to notions of respectability and supporting conservative
politics.[xxiv]

The third tier of Glebe’s social
stratification, its earliest residential precincts, territory that stretched
from St Johns Road to Broadway and occupied by families closely identified with
manual labour. They lived on the margins of society. These wage labourers
worked irregular hours for low pay, a disparate collection of landless
individuals who had little in common besides their poverty.[xxv]
The hard core of those who either played for Glebe Rugby League Club, or
followed it, lived in this neighbourhood, or in close proximity.

The neighbourhood offered families
the chance to piece together the social fabric they needed in order to exist
with some measure of security, and the values and practices of these communities
embraced neighbourliness and mutual aid. It was assumed if you lived there you
would do two things, vote Labor and barrack for the Reds. Loyalty was a prized
virtue, whether it be to kin or friends, political party, lodge, church or
league club. Without the sustaining services of a welfare state many sought out
relatives and lived with or close to them. Kinfolk could be trusted in a way
neighbours could not during periods of sickness, unemployment or old age.

Women occupied a central position in neighbourhood networks. They were
the constant factor within the household, and whatever crisis arose, they coped
as they were expected to. A narrow house in a narrow street was not merely the
centre of the lives of married working class women but the setting of virtually
all their marriage. Women, Josephine Law recalled, were regarded as ‘over the
hill’ when they reached fifty years of age. Two things could not come quick
enough for them, the change of life, and being eligible for the age pension.[xxvi]

In close, crowded neighbourhoods, Hoggart argues ‘one is inescapably part
of a group, from the warmth and security that knowledge can give, from the lack
of change of the group, and from the frequent need to ‘turn to a neighbour’
since services cannot often be bought’. And in joining a club, ‘there is
something warming in the feeling that you are with everyone else, taking part
in some mass activity…being able to feel one of the main herd’.[xxvii]

In a period of restricted geographical mobility and limited cultural
horizons, the world of the neighbourhood was divided into notions of ‘us’
against ‘them’, a feeling that the world outside is strange, often unhelpful
with ‘us’ at a disadvantage. In working class parlance ‘them’ is ‘a world of
people at the top’, and those in authority such as policemen, council
employees, the headmaster, school teacher.

The policeman was primarily regarded
as somebody who was watching them and the magistrates always believe them.
Almost invariably policemen came from working-class backgrounds and their
constant presence as an alien force within the community smarted as a betrayal.[xxviii]
Sergeant Hogg, the scourge of Glebe publicans trading on Sunday or after hours,
dispensed with his heavy boots for sandshoes for raids conducted on a wet
evening, when with umbrella pulled down over his head, he was not readily
detected.[xxix] And
Glebe Court, overlooking their neighbourhood, was a reminder to the working
class to behave themselves.

The Glebe Rugby League Club became
an integral part of the life of the neighbourhood, and a world perceived in
terms of ‘us’ and ‘them’. The networks established were an important part of
rugby league’s strength, and attraction, for it was more than a sporting club;
it also was a vibrant social institution. Its lively social life revolved
around smokos, dinners, ‘drag picnics’ and other gatherings described as
‘social’, and if a member of the club fraternity fell on hard times, or a
breadwinner died, there was a spontaneous response in the form of a benefit,
social or some other activity to raise money.[xxx]

Jack Flitcroft [1903-1989], born and bred in Glebe, recalled rugby league
patrons of the Burton Family pub ‘were strong on loyalty and comradeship, and
had little interest in property and possessions. Saturday afternoon rugby
league was their food and their drink’.[xxxi]
Players were spoken of with genuine pride as ‘our boys’ and most were local
boys, born, educated and living in Glebe. They would not reject the sub-culture
that nurtured them and were more than happy to meet supporters, often at a
local pub, to talk about the game. Working a 48 hour, five-and-a-half day week,
supporters were determined to enjoy themselves, joining mates to become fierce
partisans in the Saturday afternoon struggle of their team, and its associated
rites at a Glebe pub. On Monday, the post-mortem on the last game took place,
and anticipation of the next one carried them through the week.

League was suburb against suburb, creating a form of theatre between the
neighbouring tribes of inner Sydney. In a parochial, street-corner society,
with limited horizons, rivalry was intense, ensuring the game prospered; a
victory over Souths or Balmain was a source of great satisfaction, and an
occasion to have at least another middy. The Glebe club was a way men created
and sustained close-knit groups amid the alienation of modern industrial
society and fostered a strong sense of belonging among local people, of shared
triumph with their gladiators who carried the hopes and fears of the community,
its sense of worth, on their broad shoulders. The men who wore Red on the
football field, representing your territory, often lived just down the street.
If you didn’t know the player personally, you certainly knew all about him and
his football feats. At the pub they marvelled at the football talent of Chris
McKivat, Frank Burge and Bert Gray.

Losing was a fact of life for ordinary working people, and like all team
sports, they were drawn to the new code because they cared about who won or
lost. They cared because they identified with the club, the team, the players.
And perhaps their only victories came on the football field.

Most young boys growing up in the suburb received a basic education in
literacy and numeracy at Glebe or Forest Lodge Schools, crowded places in 1913
with enrolments exceeding 1,000 children. Few had an opportunity of going
beyond primary school.[xxxii]
At 14-years-of-age young males went out in search of a trade, and once they
served their apprenticeship they were sacked. If he pulled on the Red jersey,
however, he gained self-esteem by excelling on the football field, and an
enhanced status in the community, especially. Perhaps rugby league gave them
their only opportunity for self-esteem, an experience that sustained them
through their lives. But football prowess didn’t bring upward social mobility.

The sporting champions were the creation of the cities, Ian Turner
argues, perhaps part substitute for the challenge of the ‘bush’, and part
compensation for the lack of excitement of suburban life and the alienation of
modern industrial society.[xxxiii]
Between 1890 and 1920 the Sydney sporting press was a powerful influence on
elevating sculler Bill Beach, cricketer Vic Trumper and boxer Les Darcy to hero
status. In its formative years in Sydney rugby league supporters marvelled at
the wonderful skills of backs Dally Messenger and Harold Horder and lock
forward Frank Burge. At the club level, Glebe rugby league supporters had many local
heroes.

In writing this history I owe much to local people born between 1891 and
1908 whom I interviewed more than 35 years ago. They possessed an intimate
knowledge of Glebe gained from a life long association, whose oral testimony
filled in gaps, particularly in relation to its rugby league club and
working-class life which the manuscript material failed to yield. I gained so
much from Jack Flitcroft, Bill Gough, George Borwick, Josephine Law, Laidley
Burge, Alec Bolewski, Jack Regan, Paddy Gray and Ray Blissett. All have since
died and I much regret their passing. They gave an identity and character to
people who would otherwise remain mere names in an annual report, street
directory or electoral roll and restored to some who left no written record of
their lives, their original importance.

I have benefited from the generosity of the following people who provided
biographical information, photographs of teams and individual players and other
matters pertinent to the activities of the Glebe Club:Pearl Burge, Al Benson, David Davis, Erla
Dunne, Matthew Elliott, Brian Ellis, John Flitcroft, Warwick Flitcroft, Bruce
Gallagher, Vince and Bert Gray, John Gray, Ron Gough, David Gronow, Florence
Ireland, Venese Lewis, Beryl Nesbitt, Sid Pert, Eileen Scannell and Robbie
Wright. These people are either sons, daughters, grandsons and relatives of
Glebe players, or had a close association with a club that meant a lot to them.

I am indebted to Michael Foster for his extraordinary expertise and
effort in digitisation the photographs in this book, and finally I am deeply
appreciative of the wonderful assistance I have received from Terry Williams
over a long time. I greatly benefited from Terry’s vast knowledge of rugby
league, and his infectious enthusiasm for the game knows no bounds. And this is
a much better book for the skilful editing of Richard Cashman of Walla Walla
Press. Richard was a central figure in the emergence of Australian sports
history in the late-1970s, and creation of the journal Sporting Traditions in 1984, and has had a remarkable career
researching, writing and teaching on the history of sports in Australia.

[The chapters of this book are published online here through the kind permission of the author Mas Solling. The physical-copy book An Act of Bastardry: Rugby League Axes its First Club was published in September 2014 by Walla Walla Press.]

An Interview with historian and author Max Solling conducted
by Rex Walsh

Max Solling is one of Australia’s leading urban and sports
historians.

Born in Sydney, Max Solling has been a resident of Glebe
since 1960. He was educated at Newington College (1955-1959) [1] and the University of Sydney where he was awarded a University Sporting Blue in boxing and was Australian Universities
boxing champion. In 1972 he completed his MA
on the development of nineteenth-century Glebe and he was a founding editor of
the Leichhardt
Historical Journal.
[2] He is a qualified and
practicing solicitor

Publications

Town and Country
A Historical of the Manning Valley Halstead Press ISBN 9781920831561

Grandeur and
Grit: A History of Glebe (2007),
Halstead Press, ISBN 1-920831-38-X

Medal
of the Order of Australia for service to
the community, particularly through researching, recording and publishing
the history of Glebe.

Max Solling is working on his latest book with a focus on:
Working Class Culture and Mechanical Hare Racing in Sydney. I spoke with Max regarding this latest
project.

Rex Walsh: Max, what drew you to do a project on Mechanical Hare
Racing?

Max Solling: It is closely connected to my passionate area of working class culture and this is why I decided to write my next book [on this topic]. Writing a history of mechanical hare
racing is very much a cultural, social, economic and political enterprise. And it is closely connected with the
circumstances and values of ordinary people during the inter-war years.The racing tracks were in inner city Sydney and offered a
chance to win a wage from gambling and a night out for ordinary working class
residents. These areas were occupied by residents, transients, boarding
and lodging house populations.These years represented a time of militant trade union
and working class mobilisation.

Working class men who breed greyhounds for racing were able
to adopt an affordable hobby and way to earn a little more money. Times were tough!

At the heart of the worker militancy and
class consciousness lay a striving for order and predictability within a world
that offered the working class very little.These activities helped to sustain close-knit communities amid the
alienation of modern industrial society.

Mechanical Hare Racing represented an exciting and dramatic
cheap form of entertainment that could easily be reached in the evening after
work. “Going to the dogs” was distinctly
working class. The high levels of
unemployment (30 per cent in 1932) and a general fall in working hours
only added to the popularity.The low and irregular wages of manual workers would ensure
that people remained in their position in society.

The local rag, The Referee told readers that mechanical hare
racing provides remarkable opportunities for small owners to achieve both fame
and fortune on the track (4 March, 1931, p. 10). Greyhounds provided an opportunity for working class people to participate in a way that was not possible with other forms of racing such as
horse racing. They could be breeders,
owners, trainers and punters expressing their individuality and collective solidarity.Greyhounds became symbols of their owners'
skill and ability and made those who raced and owned them sporting heroes.

[By Rex Walsh].

Rex Walsh Bio:

Rex Walsh

Rex Walsh has qualifications in
Business, Law and Education. He has been fortunate to work across many
universities and has also taught in most units within his disciplines of
Business and Law. He finds that this assists him greatly in his teaching
of all units and in his ability to provide additional support to his students.

His particular areas of research interest involve ethics
and contemporary issues in accounting particularly social and environmental
reporting.He also works in industry and he is currently working for a
community legal service and undertaking professional consultancy work.

As a very passionate teacher Rex Walsh has been fortunate enough to have his
lecturing honored with several awards. He has been the recipient of the
Curtin Excellence Award, CPA award, received several Commendations from Curtin
for teaching excellence, and received commendations from Notre Dame University
and nominations for excellence with CQU.

About Us

Our special interest is in Football's Golden Era (1976-1990). We are also interested in Australian and Fijian sporting and social history. We welcome contributions by other authors. Contributions can take the form of comments, articles, research articles, book chapters, interviews, book or DVD reviews, match reports or news. Thanks to our regular contributors: Henry Dyer, Chris Egan, Kieran James, Max Solling, and Rex Walsh. Please send contributions to Professor Kieran James. The name "Nadi Legends Club" is used with the kind permission of the founding members of the Nadi Legends Club.
Professor Kieran James Contact: Kieran.James@uws.ac.uk and
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kieran.james.94 [Kieran James] and +44 1418483530.
Henry Dyer Contact: +679 9293317.
Rex Walsh contact: rex.walsh@bigpond.com